Honey, I Think You Should Know, I’ve Been Seeing Joanna Angel

Via To the People, I find a Fox News “sexpert” detailing the signs your partner may have a porn problem. This bit seemed rather striking:

Many people are completely in the dark that their partner likes porn, much less has a serious relationship with it. Ignorant as to any issue, they trust their lover unconditionally. They assume their partner understands that using porn, at least beyond a magazine like Playboy, is the equivalent of having an actual affair. This ignorance, combined with the great lengths to which a porn enthusiast will go to hide erotica, can leave a partner in the dark for months or even years.

This is tossed off as though it ought to be obvious to the ordinary reader. It strikes me as obviously insane. I can think of any number of valid concerns one might have about what sort of porn one’s partner is consuming, or the extent of it. But the proposition that one of them is any similarity between porn viewing and “having an actual affair” would not have occured to me. Is this view held by any significant number of sane people?

13 responses so far ↓

Sane people? No. A surprising number, though, do subscribe to the idea that porn = cheating. I assume this rests on an equivalence between physical cheating and emotional cheating. The idea may be that a serious porn consumer spends a significant amount of time fantasizing about sex with other women (and for fans of a particular model or actress, of sex with a specific other woman) and that this is similar to the mental processes in an actual affair.

Many people (mostly women, by the survey data) would rather have their partner have a meaningless one night stand than a non-physical but passionate love affair.

I wonder why Playboy is not considered “cheating.” I wouldn’t think its overall mildness would make much of a difference to the “sexpert” [ugh]. It makes even less sense if she means “using” as something different from “reading.”

If viewing porn is the equivalent of having an affair, then masturbating while thinking of anyone other than your partner must also be the equivalent of having an affair. To me it seems unrealistic, unnatural, and downright unAmerican to expect someone to police their private fantasies when they are alone in privacy.

Note that the FoxNews sexpert doesn’t take a stand on whether it’s equivalent. She says that many women feel it’s equivalent. That’s a very very different question, and it’s a little harder to argue that someone shouldn’t FEEL it’s as bad, even if we all agree that objective, it’s not as bad. They can feel however they want. And considering their feelings is relevant.